One morning each week, JoAnn Anglin travels 20 miles to the “castle on the hill.” Wearing appropriate clothes, she leaves behind any forbidden items. In her allowed tote she carries lesson plans, prepared for two classes of 8-10 students each. Every lesson she assigns is one that she herself does, whether as homework or as an in-class writing exercise.
A respected figure in the media field for many years and a practicing poet for more than 25, JoAnn teaches poetry at Folsom State Prison. Waving off skeptics and naysayers, JoAnn remains committed to this calling after six years, during which she has come to learn the value of this extraordinary time, not just for her inmate students, but also for herself as a writer, an artist, and a person.
A member of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol, JoAnn published her first chapbook of poems, Words Like Knives, Like Feathers, three years ago through Rattlesnake Press. Her poems have appeared in 100 Poems about Sacramento, the Anthology of the Third Sunday Poets, The Pagan Muse, Poems of Resistance, Voces del Nuevo Sol, Poetry Now, and The Los Angeles Review. Currently she is working on poems for a collection to be called Double Exposure.